Brief introduction to Pascal:
Why Blaise Pascal should be on the syllabus next year:
For most of the philosophers that we have looked at in the class, their main claims were reached through reasoning, relying on the the mind to understand immensely complicated topics like the infinite or God. In direct opposition to this, Blaise Pascal offers a different approach to these philosophical arguments, saying that humans can not reach an understanding of topics like the infinite or God through reason alone. More specifically, he say that the mind is the biggest contradiction due to its ability to imagine the infinite or God, but is unable to use reason to fully understand the ideas of these topics. By providing a philosopher that has very differing views of reason when compared with the rest of the philosophers in the syllabus and the cannon, we would get a more well rounded view of the philosophers of the time period and be provided with views that oppose what we would usually learn.